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Thiis article reviews the book, "Finding a Voice at Work? New Perspectives on Employment Relations," edited by Stewart Johnstone and Peter Ackers.

[This book] is a timely and much-needed exposure of historical and contemporary practices of state-sanctioned violence against Black lives in Canada. This groundbreaking work dispels many prevailing myths that cast Canada as a land of benevolence and racial equality, and uncovers long-standing state practices that have restricted Black freedom. A first of its kind, Policing Black Bodies creates a framework that makes legible how anti-Blackness has influenced the construction of Canada's carceral landscape, including the development and application of numerous criminal law enforcement and border regulation practices. The book traces the historical and contemporary mobilization of anti-Blackness spanning from slavery, 19th and 20th century segregation practices, and the application of early drug and prostitution laws through to the modern era. Maynard makes visible the ongoing legacy of a demonized and devalued Blackness that is manifest today as racial profiling by police, immigration agents and social services, the over-representation of Black communities in jails and prisons, anti-Black immigration detention and deportation practices, the over-representation of Black youth in state care, the school-to-prison pipeline and gross economic inequality. Following the dictums of the Black Lives Matter movement, Policing Black Bodies adopts an intersectional lens that explores the realities of those whose lives and experiences have historically been marginalized, stigmatized, and made invisible. In addressing how state practices have impacted Black lives, the book brings from margin to centre an analysis of gender, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, citizenship and criminalization. Beyond exploring systemic racial injustice, Policing Black Bodies pushes the limits of the Black radical imagination: it delves into liberatory Black futures and urges the necessity of transformative alternatives. --Publisher's description. Contents: On State Violence And Black Lives -- Devaluing Black Life, Demonizing Black Bodies: Anti-Blackness From Slavery To Segregation -- The Black Side Of The Mosaic: Slavery, Racial Capitalism And The Making Of Contemporary Black Poverty -- Arrested (In)Justice: From The Streets To The Prison -- Law Enforcement Violence Against Black Women: Naming Their Names, Telling Their Stories -- Misogynoir In Canada: Punitive State Practices And The Devaluation Of Black Women And Gender-Oppressed People -- "Of Whom We Have Too Many": Black Life And Border Regulation -- Destroying Black Families: Slavery's Afterlife In The Child Welfare System -- The (Mis)Education Of Black Youth: Anti-Blackness In The School System -- From "Woke" To Free: Imaging Black Futures.

This article reviews the book, "Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History," by Bryan D. Palmer and Gaétan Héroux.

Under Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), migrant workers come to Canada for up to eight months each year, without their families, to work as temporary foreign workers in agriculture. Using a ‘whole worker’ industrial relations approach, which emphasizes intersections among work, family and community relations, this article assesses the impacts of these repeated separations on the wellbeing and cohesion of Mexican workers’ transnational families. The analysis is based primarily on 74 in-depth, semi-structured interviews that were conducted in Spanish with male workers, their spouses and children, and with the children’s teachers. Assessment criteria include effects on children’s health and educational success, children’s behaviour, mothers’ abilities to cope with added roles and work, and emotional relations among workers, children and spouses. The study findings suggest that families are often negatively impacted by these repeated separations, with particular consequences for the mental and physical health of children. Children’s behavioural challenges often include poor school performance, involvement in crime, drug and alcohol abuse (especially among sons), and early pregnancies among daughters. As temporary ‘single moms,’ wives often have difficulty coping with extra functions and burdens, and lack of support when their husbands are working in Canada. Typically, there are profound emotional consequences for workers and, frequently, strained family relations. The article concludes by offering practical policy recommendations to lessen negative impacts on SAWP workers and their families, including higher remittances; improved access to labour rights and standards; and new options for family reunification.

The article reviews the book, "A Town Called Asbestos: Environmental Contamination, Health, and Resilience in a Resource Community ,"by Jessica Van Horssen.

Given the growing trend towards "fissured" employment structures char- acterized by the use of subcontractors and supply chains, the lack of any mech- anism for imposing third-party liability is a serious gap in employment standards legislation. By limiting liability to the direct employer, traditionally conceived, the legislation as it has been interpreted can leave victims of wage theft without recourse against a judgment-proof subcontractor. This paper seeks to address that deficiency by focusing on Ontario's successful experience with various statutory regimes that provide for third-party liability, including construction liens and trusts, the internal responsibility system under occupational health and safety legislation, and "cause or permit" regulatory liability in environmental and other public welfare legislation. Building on the key principles of these schemes, all of which create non-delegable responsibilities in the face of arm's- length subcontracted relationships, the author proposes the adoption of a system of joint and several liability for entities that "cause or permit" violations of employment standards. This would require lead companies to take some of the responsibility for compliance by subcontractors down the supply chain, thereby providing vulnerable workers with stronger protections against non-payment of wages. At the same time, the author argues, this approach would strike an appropriate balance with the needs of employers, because a number of low-cost tools would be available to lead companies to spread risk, and third-party lia- bility would not capture subcontracting arrangements that do not jeopardize the wage entitlements of vulnerable workers.

Going postal. We think of the rogue employee who snaps. But in [this book] Jeremy Milloy demonstrates that workplace violence never occurs in isolation. Using violence as a lens, he provides fresh and original insights into the everyday workings of capitalism, class conflict, race, and gender in the United States and Canada of the late twentieth century, bringing historical perspective to contemporary debates about North American violence. [The book] is the first full-length historical exploration of the origins and effects of individual violence in the automotive industry. Milloy’s gripping analysis spans 1960 to 1980, when North American auto plants were routinely the sites of fights, assaults, and even murders. He argues that the high levels of violence were primarily the result of workplace conditions – including on-the-job exploitation, racial tension, bureaucratization, and hypermasculinity – that made fear and loathing a shop-floor reality long before mass shootings attracted media attention in the 1980s. Workplace violence is typically the domain of management studies and psychology, but while we pass legislation and adopt best practices, the problem continues. Milloy’s explosive book reveals that workplace violence has been a constant aspect of class conflict – and that our understanding needs to go deeper. Blood, Sweat, and Fear will interest everyone concerned with the causes of workplace violence, and in particular scholars and students of labour history, sociology, sociological criminology, masculinity studies, and studies of race and of violence. --Publisher's description. Contents: Dripping with blood and dirt: confronting the history of workplace violence under capitalism -- Fights and knifings are becoming quite commonplace: Dodge main, 1965-80 -- The way boys and men took care of business: Windsor Chrysler plants -- The constant companion of all that earn their living here: workers, unions, and management respond -- Chrysler pulled the trigger: the courts and the press -- Out of the back streets and into the workplace: the discovery of workplace violence in the 1980s and 1990s.

On May 15, 2014, the Government of British Columbia apologized to its Chinese Canadian community for historical wrongs. It also committed to provide a legacy for all British Columbians so that we can learn more about a time we cannot and should not forget. This website is a part of that legacy. It offers resources that document the history of the discrimination, chronicle the consultation process and formal Apology in the Legislature, and provide updates on the many legacy projects that highlight the substantial contributions Chinese Canadians have made to the culture, history and economic prosperity of our province. --Website description

The article reviews the book, "Coxey's Army: Popular Protest in the Gilded Age," by Benjamin F. Alexander.

The article reviews the book, "Race, Nation, and Reform Ideology in Winnipeg, 1880s–1920s," by Kurt Korneski.

Thiis article reviews the book, "Réguler l’économie : l’apport des organisations patronales," edited by Danièle Fraboulet, Michel Margairaz and Pierre Verrus.

This article reviews the book, "A Place in the Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec," by Sean Mills.

The Gouzenko Affair is referred to as the event that started the Cold War. This article draws on recently declassified documents that shed new light on Britain's role in this affair, particularly that of the Foreign Office and the British High Commissioner to Canada. The documents reveal how the British had a major part in directing the response to Igor Gouzenko's defection in 1945. This event revealed the need for increased counterespionage security, but it also became a spectacle that directed the public's attention away from the British connection: specifically, the role of Alan Nunn May, a British nuclear scientist who had provided the Soviets with classified information. Instead, the public's interest was centred on Soviet spies, communism as a subversive force, and the brewing Soviet-US conflict. These newly declassified sources demonstrate how it was the British intelligence services and the British government that went to great lengths to help focus the public's attention in this direction. They took great pains to direct Canadian policymaking, which included working to discourage Canada's prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King from handling the affair privately with the Soviet ambassador, and were likely behind the infamous press leak to US reporter Drew Pearson that forced King to call a Royal Commission and publicize the affair. With the help of the British government and intelligence services, the Cold War began.

During periods of intense conflict, either at home or abroad, governments enact emergency powers in order to exercise greater control over the society that they govern. The expectation though is that once the conflict is over, these emergency powers will be lifted. An Exceptional Law showcases how the emergency law used to repress labour activism during the First World War became normalized with the creation of Section 98 of the Criminal Code, following the Winnipeg General Strike. Dennis G. Molinaro argues that the institutionalization of emergency law became intricately tied to constructing a national identity. Following a mass deportation campaign in the 1930s, Section 98 was repealed in 1936 and contributed to the formation of Canada's first civil rights movement. Portions of it were used during the October Crisis and recently in the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2015. Building on the theoretical framework of Agamben, Molinaro advances our understanding of security as ideology and reveals the intricate and codependent relationship between state-formation, the construction of liberal society, and exclusionary practices. --Publisher's description. Contents: For the protection of people and state -- Defining suspects -- The trial -- Citizens of the world -- Outlaws -- Judgement.

The article reviews the book, "Security/Capital: A General Theory of Pacification," by George S. Rigakos.

This paper evaluates the potential of the framework of reasonable accom- modation under Canadian human rights legislation to respond adequately to the workplace discrimination claims of minorities, particularly racialized Muslim women. Developing the premise that religious freedom and gender equality are not mutually exclusive, the author considers the legislative and judicial context of multiculturalism in Canada, as exemplified by the R. v. NS case (dealing with whether a witness in legal proceedings may wear a niqab while testifying) and by certain legislative initiatives (such as the federal Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act and the Quebec Charter of Values) that reflect a climate of growing xenophobia and islamophobia and that reinforce the "otherness" of minority racialized women under the pretext of secularism and gender equality. The paper then examines more closely the existing legal framework for rea- sonable accommodation in the workplace, arguing that the rigorous standard adopted by the Supreme Court in Meiorin was weakened and devalued in subse- quent decisions such as McGill and Hydro-Qu6bec. Ultimately, the author con- tends, state multiculturalism should be challenged and reconceptualized through the prism of critical multiculturalism, in order to move away from a simplistic emphasis on cultural difference and to address the underlying systemic issues of racism and discrimination. Furthermore, she argues, the notion of reasonable accommodation should be reformulated to shift the focus away from accommo- dation of minority women as tolerated exceptions to the norm, and towards the achievement of substantive equality through structural change.

This article reviews the book, "Working Through the Past: Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective," edited by Teri L. Caraway, Maria Lorena Cook, and Stephen Crowley.

Though rare in Canada, community benefits agreements (cbas) are now commonly being negotiated by labour-community coalitions in American cities. cbas require "urban revitalization" projects to provide living wages, affordable housing, and access to jobs for marginalized residents. Surprisingly little has been written about cbas within the labour studies literature, and most critiques of cbas correspond with private developments. This case study draws on three years of participatory, action-based fieldwork with a labour-community coalition, called the Toronto Community Benefits Network (hereafter, the Network). Formed in 2013, the Network tried to negotiate the first-ever cba with the Ontario government, linked to the $6.6 billion Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit project in Toronto. The Network won discursive support for cbas from provincial policymakers, but demands for employment equity were met with only an ineffective workplace-development approach. I explain and evaluate the Network's "insider strategy" in relation to political vulnerabilities of the government of Ontario; the Network's efforts to mobilize resources and gain union support; and the changing labour-relations regime governing infrastructure projects in Toronto. I argue that while cbas open a new terrain of struggle for marginalized groups and unions to assert a right to the city, these struggles are being coopted by governments and used as political cover for deepening neoliberal governance.

This paper focuses on safety on multi-employer worksites in high-risk industries. Relevant industries are those that utilize flexible labour arrangements and specialization, such as construction, mining and petroleum production, and that traditionally have been high-risk due to hazards in the physical work environment and the occurrence of unsafe work processes and practices. These industries also share common characteristics in matters of overall work environments, multi-employer worksites (including subcontracting chains), as well as tasks performed by contractors, making it relevant to explore and clarify the situation regarding the safety of the affected groups. A comprehensive review is performed of 43 peer-reviewed research articles published up until early 2015, with a main focus on international studies covering safety issues on multi-employer worksites in construction and industrial work settings such as mining, petroleum production and manufacturing.The results show that previous research has focused on a number of key issues that may be divided into three broad categories: 1- contract work characteristics; 2- structural/organizational factors and conditions; 3- cultural conditions. Much of the focus is on structure and organization, for example, how multi-employer arrangements can lead to breakdowns in communication and overall disorganization effects in relation to safety. There is, however, a need for further studies on the nature of these structural and organizational factors and conditions, such as focused studies on the consequences of power asymmetry for the ability of contractors to adhere to safety laws and regulations. Furthermore, we argue that the development towards blurred organizational boundaries in these networks due to extensive outsourcing and long-term contracts may be a worthwhile avenue for future research into safety on multi-employer worksites. // Cet article se concentre sur les mesures de sécurité dans les chantiers multi- employeurs d’industries à hauts risques. Les industries concernées sont celles qui font appel à l’organisation du travail flexible et à la spécialisation, telles que la construction, l’activité minière et l’industrie pétrolière, et qui sont traditionnellement reconnues comme comportant des risques élevés à la santé à cause des dangers inhérents à l’environnement physique du travail et à l’existence de pratiques et de processus de travail non sécuritaires. Ces industries ont aussi en commun certaines caractéristiques en matière d’environnement de travail général dans des milieux de travail multi-employeurs (incluant des chaînes de sous-contractants), de même qu’en matière d’activités exercées par les entrepreneurs, justifiant ainsi le besoin d’explorer et de clarifier la situation en regard de la sécurité au travail des groupes affectés. Pour ce faire, nous avons mené un examen approfondi de 43 articles de recherches évalués par des pairs et publiés jusqu’au début avril 2015, avec une attention particulière envers les études internationales couvrant les questions de sécurité au travail dans des milieux multi-employeurs dans la construction et dans des secteurs industriels, telles l’activité minière, la production pétrolière et l’activité manufacturière.Les résultats indiquent que ces recherches ont jusqu’ici identifié un certain nombre d’enjeux-clés qui peuvent être regroupés en trois grandes catégories : 1- les caractéristiques du contrat de travail; 2- les conditions et les facteurs structurels et organisationnels; 3- les conditions culturelles. L’attention principale porte sur les dimensions structurelles et organisationnelles, à savoir comment les dispositions multi-employeurs peuvent conduire à des ruptures dans la communication et à des effets de désorganisation générale en matière de sécurité au travail. Il y a, également, un besoin de poursuivre les études sur la nature de ces facteurs et de ces conditions structurelles et organisationnelles, notamment la réalisation d’études portant sur les conséquences de l’asymétrie de pouvoir et sur la capacité des entrepreneurs d’adhérer aux règlementations et aux lois en matière de sécurité au travail. De plus, nous soutenons que la croissance de frontières organisationnelles floues dans ces réseaux, en raison de l’existence d’une importante sous-traitance et de contrats à long terme, devrait se révéler une avenue prometteuse pour les futures recherches sur la sécurité au travail dans des milieux multi-employeurs.